Now, he's starting to walk again with the help of prosthetic legs outfitted with Bluetooth technology more commonly associated with douchebags who wear stupid fucking blue blinky things in their ear even while at the movie theatre.

Mundane? Bluetooth and similar universally wireless communications protocols are part of the "utterly amazing things that people don't appreciate/harness" enough. The idea that companies are finally agreeing on one way for devices to talk to each other, then the payoff of the utterly unexpected combinations and contraptions that people will come up with as a result.

Performance artists are known for pushing the bounderies, but one Australian has astonished his contemporaries by having a third ear implanted onto his arm.

The Cypriot-born eccentric Stelios Arcadious spent 10 years searching for a surgeon willing to perform the controversial operation. He got his wish after working as a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University's Digital Research Unit. The ear was grown in a lab from cells and implanted into the 61-year-olds left forearm in 2006.

Mr Arcadious said he thought art "should be more than simply illustrating ideas." Once the ear has fully developed he hopes to get a microphone implanted as well.

"It is more of a relief at present than an ear but it is still recognisable as an ear," he said. "The last operation was in September 2006 and its only now that I'm about ready for the next step.

"I hope to have a tiny microphone implanted to it that will connect with a bluetooth transmitter; that way you can listen to what my ear is hearing."